Why does the so-called Swiss Biotech Day happen over 2 days? The Swiss Biotech Day 2026 took place on May 4th-5th at the Congress Center in Basel, the world’s renowned city of pharma and innovation. Since its main aim is to represent biotech and pharma globally, and promote partnering at scale, the meeting kicked-off when New Zealand started their day, and ended when California went to bed… all within that one long day.
And what a packed day that was! To frame that into numbers, the Swiss Biotech Day 2026 gathered over 3,500 registrants, 150+ exhibitors, 120+ company presentations, 31 international delegations in the Global Village, and 60+ panel and roundtable discussions. This incredibly varied programme offering made it almost challenging for attendees to choose which session and room to be in… but this conference was different. The main aim of the Swiss Biotech Day is to foster a climate for new connections, partnerships, and business opportunities to support future growth.
ACBio had the pleasure of attending the meeting for the first time as a Swiss Biotech Association member. Here are some of our highlights!
Switzerland as the hub for international partnership
As the CEO of the Swiss Biotech Association Dr Michael Altorfer repeated in both plenary sessions, the Swiss Biotech Day isn’t done for Switzerland, but for the global biotech and pharma community. In alignment to this, 47% of attendees were from outside Switzerland, and from 58 different countries, according to the organisers. During those 2 days, international partnerships take center stage with the city of Basel as the ideal backdrop for having an ‘outward looking’ approach to innovation and business.
We did, however, hear key figures on how well biotech and pharma in Switzerland are doing. The pharmaceutical industry has been responsible for over 40% of total Swiss economic growth over the last decade, and about CHF 6 Billion are spent in R&D in Switzerland annually. And despite being a small country, Switzerland has ranked Switzerland has ranked as the world’s #1 most innovative country for 15 consecutive years (2025 Global Innovation Index published by the World Intellectual Property Organization).
Strategy, optionality, and the value chain
During his opening address, Roche’s CEO Dr Thomas Schinecker, made it very clear: “Hope is not a strategy”. He eloquently spoke about having the right mindset and sense of urgency even in large corporations, and the importance of working in a crisis scenario without being in a crisis… as patients (and money) can’t wait. He highlighted 3 reasons why any country should invest in scientific R&D and biotech: the health & wellbeing of patients, the benefits to the economy, and national security.
During the business development panel shortly after, the importance of optionality, the strategic practice of preserving the ability to choose among multiple future paths such as scaling, pivoting, or exiting, was highlighted as a key leverage for biotech companies negotiating with pharma. In this context, one of the panel members recommended building a strategy to prepare biotech assets to the end of phase II, while generating data and remaining open along the way.
It was also interesting to hear the heavyweights during the plenary session on day 2, highlight the importance of bringing transformative yet kind medicines to patients, and how Switzerland offers a good ecosystem for biotech and pharma integration to deliver this.
Emerging biotechs and success stories
One of the elements that made the Swiss Biotech Day a success is that attendees could get invaluable insights from pharma VPs and new founders from one conference room to the next. Many companies had the opportunity to pitch to investors and other stakeholders, including several emerging biotechs with exciting new products or proof-of-concept data, plenty of passion, and some clever pitches. The organisers did a great job of offering such a platform to the future stars and success stories of biotech, which will hopefully result in life-changing medicines and products for patients.
On the success stories front, this year’s award was given to Prof Dr Patrick Aebischer, for his impressive contributions to Swiss biotech as a scientist, president of EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne), and serial entrepreneur. His speech was a true inspiration to all attendees.
While the business value and return on investment are at the forefront of many decision-makers, it was encouraging to hear venture specialists during the second plenary session validating that people really matter; their passion, their skills, their connections… and often when scaling a business, their suffering! And while all paths are different for founders, there surely are plenty of options available to support growth where talent and tenacity (which happen to be the Swiss Biotech Association 2026 Report keywords) converge.
If you’re interested in joining the next Swiss Biotech Day, this will be happening on April 26-27, 2027, at Congress Center Basel.
You can access the 2026 Swiss Biotech Day gallery (by bamconn GmbH): here
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